CHAPTER I

Thus communed these; while to their lowly dome,
The full-fed swine return'd with evening home;
Compell'd, reluctant, to the several sties,
With din obstreperous, and ungrateful cries.
Pope's Odyssey.

In that pleasant district of merry England which
is watered by the river Don, there extended in ancient
times a large forest, covering the greater part
of the beautiful hills and valleys which lie between
Sheffield and the pleasant town of Doncaster. The
remains of this extensive wood are still to be seen
at the noble seats of Wentworth, of Warncliffe
Park, and around Rotherham. Here haunted of
yore the fabulous Dragon of Wantley; here were
fought many of the most desperate battles during
the Civil Wars of the Roses; and here also flourished
in ancient times those bands of gallant outlaws,
whose deeds have been rendered so popular
in English song.

Such being our chief scene, the date of our story
refers to a period towards the end of the reign of
Richard I., when his return from his long captivity
had become an event rather wished than hoped
for by his despairing subjects, who were in the
meantime subjected to every species of subordinate
oppression. The nobles, whose power had become
exorbitant during the reign of Stephen, and whom
the prudence of Henry the Second had scarce reduced
to some degree of subjection to the crown,
had now resumed their ancient license in its utmost
extent; despising the feeble interference of the
English Council of State, fortifying their castles,
increasing the number of their dependants, reducing
all around them to a state of vassalage, and
striving by every means in their power, to place
themselves each at the head of such forces as might
enable him to make a figure in the national convulsions
which appeared to be impending.

The situation of the inferior gentry, or Franklins,
as they were called, who, by the law and spirit
of the English constitution, were entitled to hold
themselves independent of feudal tyranny, became
now unusually precarious. If, as was most generally
the case, they placed themselves under the
protection of any of the petty kings in their vicinity,
accepted of feudal offices in his household, or
bound themselves by mutual treaties of alliance
and protection, to support him in his enterprises,
they might indeed purchase temporary repose; but
it must be with the sacrifice of that independence
which was so dear to every English bosom, and at
the certain hazard of being involved as a party in
whatever rash expedition the ambition of their protector
might lead him to undertake. On the other
hand, such and so multiplied were the means of
vexation and oppression possessed by the great
Barons, that they never wanted the pretext, and
seldom the will, to harass and pursue, even to the
very edge of destruction, any of their less powerful
neighbours, who attempted to separate themselves
from their authority, and to trust for their protection,
during the dangers of the times, to their own
inoffensive conduct, and to the laws of the land.

A circumstance which greatly tended to enhance
the tyranny of the nobility, and the sufferings of
the inferior classes, arose from the consequences
of the Conquest by Duke William of Normandy.
Four generations had not sufficed to blend the hostile
blood of the Normans and Anglo-Saxons, or to
unite, by common language and mutual interests,
two hostile races, one of which still felt the elation
of triumph, while the other groaned under all the
consequences of defeat. The power bad been completely
placed in the hands of the Norman nobility,
by the event of the battle of Hastings, and it had
been used, as our histories assure us, with no moderate
hand. The whole race of Saxon princes and
nobles had been extirpated or disinherited, with
few or no exceptions; nor were the numbers great
who possessed land in the country of their fathers,
even as proprietors of the second, or of yet inferior
classes. The royal policy had long been to weaken,
by every means, legal or illegal, the strength of a
part of the population which was justly considered
as nourishing the most inveterate antipathy to their
victor. All the monarchs of the Norman race had
shown the most marked predilection for their Norman
subjects; the laws of the chase, and many
others equally unknown to the milder and more
free spirit of the Saxon constitution, had been fixed
upon the necks of the subjugated inhabitants, to add
weight, as it were, to the feudal chains with which
they were loaded. At court, and in the castles of
the great nobles, where the pomp and state of a court
was emulated, Norman-French was the only language
employed; in courts of law, the pleadings
and judgments were delivered in the same tongue.
In short, French was the language of honour, of
chivalry, and even of justice, while the far more
manly and expressive Anglo-Saxon was abandoned
to the use of rustics and hinds, who knew no other.
Still, however, the necessary intercourse between
the lords of the soil, and those oppressed inferior
beings by whom that soil was cultivated, occasioned
the gradual formation of a dialect, compounded
betwixt the French and the Anglo-Saxon, in which
they could render themselves mutually intelligible
to each other; and from this necessity arose by
degrees the structure of our present English language,
in which the speech of the victors and the
vanquished have been so happily blended together;
and which has since been so richly improved by
importations from the classical languages, and from
those spoken by the southern nations of Europe.

This state of things I have thought it necessary
to premise for the information of the general reader,
who might be apt to forget, that, although no great
historical events, such as war or insurrection, mark
the existence of the Anglo-Saxons as a separate
people subsequent to the reign of William the Second;
yet the great national distinctions betwixt
them and their conquerors, the recollection of what
they had formerly been, and to what they were
now reduced, continued down to the reign of Edward
the Third, to keep open the wounds which
the Conquest had inflicted, and to maintain a line
of separation betwixt the descendants of the victor
Normans and the vanquished Saxons.

--

The sun was setting upon one of the rich grassy
glades of that forest, which we have mentioned in
the beginning of the chapter. Hundreds of broad-headed,
short-stemmed, wide-branched oaks, which
had witnessed perhaps the stately march of the Roman
soldiery, flung their gnarled arms over a thick
carpet of the most delicious green sward; in some
places they were intermingled with beeches, hollies,
and copsewood of various descriptions, so closely
as totally to intercept the level beams of the sinking
sun; in others they receded from each other,
forming those long sweeping vistas, in the intricacy
of which the eye delights to lose itself, while imagination
considers them as the paths to yet wilder
scenes of silvan solitude. Here the red rays of
the sun shot a broken and discoloured light, that
partially hung upon the shattered boughs and mossy
trunks of the trees, and there they illuminated in
brilliant patches the portions of turf to which they
made their way. A considerable open space, in the
midst of this glade, seemed formerly to have been
dedicated to the rites of Druidical superstition;
for, on the summit of a hillock, so regular as to
seem artificial, there still remained part of a circle
of rough unhewn stones, of large dimensions. Seven
stood upright; the rest had been dislodged from
their places, probably by the zeal of some convert
to Christianity, and lay, some prostrate near their
former site, and others on the side of the hill. One
large stone only had found its way to the bottom,
and in stopping the course of a small brook, which
glided smoothly round the foot of the eminence,
gave, by its opposition, a feeble voice of murmur
to the placid and elsewhere silent streamlet.

The human figures which completed this landscape,
were in number two, partaking, in their dress
and appearance, of that wild and rustic character,
which belonged to the woodlands of the West-Riding
of Yorkshire at that early period. The
eldest of these men had a stern, savage, and wild
aspect. His garment was of the simplest form
imaginable, being a close jacket with sleeves, composed
of the tanned skin of some animal, on which
the hair had been originally left, but which had
been worn of in so many places, that it would
have been difficult to distinguish from the patches
that remained, to what creature the fur had belonged.
This primeval vestment reached from the
throat to the knees, and served at once all the
usual purposes of body-clothing; there was no wider
opening at the collar, than was necessary to
admit the passage of the head, from which it may
be inferred, that it was put on by slipping it over
the head and shoulders, in the manner of a modern
shirt, or ancient hauberk. Sandals, bound with
thongs made of boars' hide, protected the feet, and
a roll of thin leather was twined artificially round
the legs, and, ascending above the calf, left the
knees bare, like those of a Scottish Highlander.
To make the jacket sit yet more close to the body,
it was gathered at the middle by a broad leathern
belt, secured by a brass buckle; to one side of
which was attached a sort of scrip, and to the other
a ram's horn, accoutred with a mouthpiece, for the
purpose of blowing. In the same belt was stuck
one of those long, broad, sharp-pointed, and two-edged
knives, with a buck's-horn handle, which
were fabricated in the neighbourhood, and bore
even at this early period the name of a Sheffield
whittle. The man had no covering upon his head,
which was only defended by his own thick hair,
matted and twisted together, and scorched by the
influence of the sun into a rusty dark-red colour,
forming a contrast with the overgrown beard upon
his cheeks, which was rather of a yellow or amber
hue. One part of his dress only remains, but it is
too remarkable to be suppressed; it was a brass
ring, resembling a dog's collar, but without any
opening, and soldered fast round his neck, so loose
as to form no impediment to his breathing, yet so
tight as to be incapable of being removed, excepting
by the use of the file. On this singular gorget
was engraved, in Saxon characters, an inscription
of the following purport:---``Gurth, the son of
Beowulph, is the born thrall of Cedric of Rotherwood.''

Beside the swine-herd, for such was Gurth's occupation,
was seated, upon one of the fallen Druidical monuments,
a person about ten years younger in appearance,
and whose dress, though resembling his companion's in form,
was of better materials, and of a more fantastic appearance.
His jacket had been stained of a bright purple hue,
upon which there had been some attempt to paint
grotesque ornaments in different colours.
To the jacket he added a short cloak, which
scarcely reached half way down his thigh;
it was of crimson cloth, though a good deal soiled,
lined with bright yellow; and as he could transfer it
from one shoulder to the other, or at his pleasure draw it
all around him, its width, contrasted with its want of
longitude, formed a fantastic piece of drapery.
He had thin silver bracelets upon his arms, and on his
neck a collar of the same metal bearing the inscription,
``Wamba, the son of Witless, is the thrall of
Cedric of Rotherwood.'' This personage had the
same sort of sandals with his companion, but instead
of the roll of leather thong, his legs were
cased in a sort of gaiters, of which one was red
and the other yellow. He was provided also with
a cap, having around it more than one bell, about
the size of those attached to hawks, which jingled
as he turned his head to one side or other; and as
he seldom remained a minute in the same posture,
the sound might be considered as incessant. Around
the edge of this cap was a stiff bandeau of leather,
cut at the top into open work, resembling a coronet,
while a prolonged bag arose from within it,
and fell down on one shoulder like an old-fashioned
nightcap, or a jelly-bag, or the head-gear of a
modern hussar. It was to this part of the cap that
the bells were attached; which circumstance, as
well as the shape of his head-dress, and his own
half-crazed, half-cunning expression of countenance,
sufficiently pointed him out as belonging to
the race of domestic clowns or jesters, maintained
in the houses of the wealthy, to help away the
tedium of those lingering hours which they were
obliged to spend within doors. He bore, like his
companion, a scrip, attached to his belt, but had
neither horn nor knife, being probably considered
as belonging to a class whom it is esteemed dangerous
to intrust with edge-tools. In place of these,
he was equipped with a sword of lath, resembling
that with which Harlequin operates his wonders
upon the modern stage.

The outward appearance of these two men formed
scarce a stronger contrast than their look and
demeanour. That of the serf, or bondsman, was
sad and sullen; his aspect was bent on the ground
with an appearance of deep dejection, which might
be almost construed into apathy, had not the fire
which occasionally sparkled in his red eye manifested
that there slumbered, under the appearance of
sullen despondency, a sense of oppression, and a disposition
to resistance. The looks of Wamba, on
the other hand, indicated, as usual with his class,
a sort of vacant curiosity, and fidgetty impatience
of any posture of repose, together with the utmost
self-satisfaction respecting his own situation, and
the appearance which he made. The dialogue which
they maintained between them, was carried on in
Anglo-Saxon, which, as we said before, was universally
spoken by the inferior classes, excepting
the Norman soldiers, and the immediate personal
dependants of the great feudal nobles. But to give
their conversation in the original would convey but
little information to the modern reader, for whose
benefit we beg to offer the following translation:

``The curse of St Withold upon these infernal
porkers!'' said the swine-herd, after blowing his
horn obstreperously, to collect together the scattered
herd of swine, which, answering his call with
notes equally melodious, made, however, no haste
to remove themselves from the luxurious banquet
of beech-mast and acorns on which they had fattened,
or to forsake the marshy banks of the rivulet,
where several of them, half plunged in mud,
lay stretched at their ease, altogether regardless of
the voice of their keeper. ``The curse of St Withold
upon them and upon me!'' said Gurth; ``if the two-legged
wolf snap not up some of them ere nightfall,
I am no true man. Here, Fangs! Fangs!'' he
ejaculated at the top of his voice to a ragged wolfish-looking
dog, a sort of lurcher, half mastiff, half
greyhound, which ran limping about as if with the
purpose of seconding his master in collecting the
refractory grunters; but which, in fact, from misapprehension
of the swine-herd's signals, ignorance
of his own duty, or malice prepense, only drove
them hither and thither, and increased the evil which
he seemed to design to remedy. ``A devil draw
the teeth of him,'' said Gurth, ``and the mother of
mischief confound the Ranger of the forest, that cuts
the foreclaws off our dogs, and makes them unfit
for their trade!* Wamba, up and help me an thou

[*] Note A. The Ranger of the Forest, that cuts the fore-claws off our dogs.

beest a man; take a turn round the back o' the
hill to gain the wind on them; and when thous't
got the weather-gage, thou mayst drive them before
thee as gently as so many innocent lambs.''

``Truly,'' said Wamba, without stirring from the
spot, ``I have consulted my legs upon this matter,
and they are altogether of opinion, that to carry
my gay garments through these sloughs, would be
an act of unfriendship to my sovereign person and
royal wardrobe; wherefore, Gurth, I advise thee
to call off Fangs, and leave the herd to their destiny,
which, whether they meet with bands of travelling
soldiers, or of outlaws, or of wandering
pilgrims, can be little else than to be converted into
Normans before morning, to thy no small ease
and comfort.''

``Why, how call you those grunting brutes running
about on their four legs?'' demanded Wamba.

``Swine, fool, swine,'' said the herd, ``every fool knows that.''

``And swine is good Saxon,'' said the Jester;
``but how call you the sow when she is flayed,
and drawn, and quartered, and hung up by the heels,
like a traitor?''

``Pork,'' answered the swine-herd.

``I am very glad every fool knows that too,'' said
Wamba, ``and pork, I think, is good Norman-French;
and so when the brute lives, and is in the charge
of a Saxon slave, she goes by her Saxon name;
but becomes a Norman, and is called pork,
when she is carried to the Castle-hall to feast among
the nobles what dost thou think of this, friend Gurth, ha?''

``Nay, I can tell you more,'' said Wamba, in the
same tone; ``there is old Alderman Ox continues
to hold his Saxon epithet, while he is under the
charge of serfs and bondsmen such as thou, but becomes
Beef, a fiery French gallant, when he arrives
before the worshipful jaws that are destined to
consume him. Mynheer Calf, too, becomes Monsieur
de Veau in the like manner; he is Saxon when
he requires tendance, and takes a Norman name
when he becomes matter of enjoyment.''

``By St Dunstan,'' answered Gurth, ``thou speakest
but sad truths; little is left to us but the air
we breathe, and that appears to have been reserved
with much hesitation, solely for the purpose of
enabling us to endure the tasks they lay upon our
shoulders. The finest and the fattest is for their
board; the loveliest is for their couch; the best
and bravest supply their foreign masters with soldiers,
and whiten distant lands with their bones,
leaving few here who have either will or the power
to protect the unfortunate Saxon. God's blessing
on our master Cedric, he hath done the work of a
man in standing in the gap; but Reginald Front-de-B<oe>uf
is coming down to this country in person,
and we shall soon see how little Cedric's trouble
will avail him.---Here, here,'' he exclaimed again,
raising his voice, ``So ho! so ho! well done, Fangs!
thou hast them all before thee now, and bring'st
them on bravely, lad.''

``Gurth,'' said the Jester, ``I know thou thinkest
me a fool, or thou wouldst not be so rash in
putting thy head into my mouth. One word to
Reginald Front-de-B<oe>uf, or Philip de Malvoisin,
that thou hast spoken treason against the Norman,
---and thou art but a cast-away swineherd,---thou
wouldst waver on one of these trees as a terror to
all evil speakers against dignities.''

``Dog, thou wouldst not betray me,'' said Gurth,
``after having led me on to speak so much at disadvantage?''

``Betray thee!'' answered the Jester; ``no, that
were the trick of a wise man; a fool cannot half so
well help himself---but soft, whom have we here?''
he said, listening to the trampling of several horses
which became then audible.

``Never mind whom,'' answered Gurth, who had
now got his herd before him, and, with the aid of
Fangs, was driving them down one of the long dim
vistas which we have endeavoured to describe.

``Nay, but I must see the riders,'' answered
Wamba; ``perhaps they are come from Fairy-land
with a message from King Oberon.''

``A murrain take thee,'' rejoined the swine-herd;
``wilt thou talk of such things, while a terrible
storm of thunder and lightning is raging within a
few miles of us? Hark, how the thunder rumbles!
and for summer rain, I never saw such broad downright
flat drops fall out of the clouds; the oaks, too,
notwithstanding the calm weather, sob and creak
with their great boughs as if announcing a tempest.
Thou canst play the rational if thou wilt; credit
me for once, and let us home ere the storm begins
to rage, for the night will be fearful.''

Wamba seemed to feel the force of this appeal,
and accompanied his companion, who began his
journey after catching up a long quarter-staff which
lay upon the grass beside him. This second Eum<ae>us
strode hastily down the forest glade, driving
before him, with the assistance of Fangs,
the whole herd of his inharmonious charge.